watchdog on MacOS not generating event for file metadata modification (e.g. tags, Finder Comment)

[tom-n-pdx]

Problem: Using watchdog on MacOS changes to an existing file's metadata are not being reported via an event.

I'm using a FileSystemEventHandler handler that reports all events and monitoring a file tree on my MacBook APFS hard drive.

How to reproduce: Add a user tag via Finder. No event is generated.

File creations, renames and deletions are reported ok. A Finder comment change generates a modification event for the .DS_Store file in the directory. This is a limitation of where Finder comments are stored by MacOS and I can work around it.

Why: I'm monitoring a filesystem to sync data between the hard drive and cloud and want to sync modifications to user tags and com.apple.metadata:KMDItem spotlight metadata.

Workaround: I'm open to suggestions- right now my plan is to do a full file tree walk every hour and look for changes in metadata.

Versions: watchdog 0.10.3 on MacOS 10.15.7 with Python 3.8.6 (homebrew install).

[BoboTiG]

Hello,

It should work but I just saw that we have no tests (https://github.com/gorakhargosh/watchdog/search?q=xattr). So maybe is there a bug there. We should start by adding a test and see if the CI fails.

[CCP-Aporia]

Thanks for the detailed report!

The changes in #716 are going to resolve this problem - the given reproduction is going to result in a FileModifiedEvent there. It's just a matter of re-creating them for mainline, which I hope to get done this week.

[BoboTiG]

Done with 614ccfc.